Om Malik notes rumors of an Apple / Motorola project to develop an "iPhone." Jeff Nolan asks, "when will I be able to untether the phone number from
the device without going through the inconvenience of taking the SIM
chip out?" Until they develop Jeff’s ideal phone, maybe one strategy to consider is Paul Boutin’s suggestion in Slate to "Ditch your Treo for a dirt-cheap Nokia [6600]."
So, why am I telling you to rush out and get a cheap,
ugly phone? Because the Nokia 6600 lets you add the cool features you
want without paying for the ones you don’t care about. For the price of
a calling plan, you’ll start with plenty of gadgetry you’d think they
would have saved for the glitzy, high-end models. There’s a
speakerphone, voice dialing, an audio recorder, a serviceable
640-by-480 pixel camera, a (silent) video recorder, RealPlayer for
playing back audio and video clips, an infrared port, and a flash
memory slot that comes loaded with a 32-megabyte card. Most important,
the 6600 comes with Bluetooth and the Symbian operating system with
Series 60, the same robust, reliable platform that’s installed on
high-end Nokias and the $600 Siemens SX1. […] The combination of
Series 60 and Bluetooth allows you to add pretty much any peripheral
device you can imagine.
Eight Diagrams 